1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inkjet recording apparatus which includes an actuator and a nozzle, and performs recording on a recording medium by driving the actuator to eject a droplet of ink from the nozzle onto the recording medium.
2. Description of Related Art
As an inkjet recording apparatus of this kind, there is known an apparatus capable of recording a barcode. Related to such an inkjet recording apparatus, there has been proposed to reduce a size of a dot on an outline of a black area (i.e., black bar or cell) constituting a part of a barcode, compared to that of the other dots on the inner side of the outline, in order to reduce spreading of the ink forming the dot on the outline, into a white area (or white bar or cell) adjacent to the black area, in other words, in order to reduce growth of the dot into the white bar or cell. The proposed technique can be found in the following publications 1-4.
Publication 1: JP-A-2003-237059
Publication 2: JP-A-2002-292848
Publication 3: JP-A-2000-103042
Publication 4: JP-A-2003-285453
Each of the publications 1-3 teaches to print one dot on a recording medium by ejecting one ink droplet from a nozzle. More specifically, when a dot on an outline of a black area is to be printed, an ink droplet of a volume smaller than that of an ink droplet ejected in the case of printing a dot not on the outline, is ejected. According to this method, a size of one dot depends on a volume of one ink droplet. Hence, a variation in the volume of ink droplets greatly affects the shape, size and density of the dots, inviting degradation in the print quality at the outline of the black area. When the volume of an ink droplet is insufficient, the print density at the outline of the black area may become accordingly too low.
Meanwhile, the publication 4 teaches to print one dot with one ink droplet at an outline of an image, and with two or three ink droplets at the other part of the image. According to this method, the print density of the image may become insufficient at the outline.
Thus, all of the publications 1-4 set forth above fail to eliminate the possibility of degradation in the print quality at the outline of the black area.